Think of the hips as the keystone for the body - they have to be strong and sturdy to hold the legs and torso in a good alignment. How do weak hips affect the rest of your body? You could even compress nerves and develop common issues like sciatica from sitting too much. When you go to stand up, you end up trying to put the pelvis back into a standing position and some of these muscles get irritated and strained in the process. So you’re stretching some of the hamstring muscles, you’re loosening some of the quadriceps, and you’re creating a different kind of posture for your hips. When you’re sitting, you’re putting all your muscles into a different kind of posture. But when we examine them, their hips are not only really weak but there’s often tenderness on the sides of their hips where the gluteus muscles attach. People will come in - especially kids - and they’ll say, “My ankles hurt a little bit and my knees hurt a little in front, usually after sports.” I ask if they have hip pain and usually they’ll say no. You mentioned that biomechanical instability often begins at the hips and lower back, and that weak hips are “borderline epidemic.” All these awkward stresses on the body are collectively called “biomechanical instability.” We’re made to move, and when we try to stand and move again, we’re asking these tight muscles to comply but they’re not going to. Which is fine if we don’t move, but that’s not what our bodies were made for. When a disc bulges or even herniates, the muscles around it start to lock up to hold everything in place so we can’t damage it further. One of the bigger problems is that the discs in between our lumbar vertebrae start to bulge, which usually becomes a chronic problem. What are the most serious problems caused by sitting too much? The lower back bears the brunt of the strain. As the back starts coming forward, the body is almost caving in on itself. Then the whole back starts to arch forward because the muscles get a little strained and thus a little weaker. We begin to develop those classic “knots.” Over time that becomes tender, painful, and tight. It puts a strain on our trapezius muscle, which connects to the shoulder and the upper back to hold the neck up in place. We’re arching our necks up a little bit, which increases the curvature of our necks, or cervical lordosis. This is assuming we don’t have great posture to begin with. The neck gets tense and tight because we’re straining. It’s about posture more than anything else. As sitting all day becomes more accepted, we decondition ourselves, and when we’re deconditioned, we end up increasing our risk for injury.
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